If you are marketing your business online (and who isn’t at this point?), you can’t escape hearing about content marketing. In fact, “Content is King” is a phrase that’s often used and abused to underline the importance of a powerful content marketing strategy if you want to build your business online. The question is: Why is content marketing so important for marketers?

The answer lies in the very definition of content marketing, which is the strategy of producing and publishing information to:

Fuel your lead generation

Drive leads through your sales funnel to turn them into customers

Build trust and authority among customers so people feel loyal to you

And become recognized as a thought leader in your industry

The challenge is to get your content generation machine up and running. The truth is that whether you run a small, local business or head a large, global operation, a lack of budget, time and resources can prevent you from developing a strategy for regularly creating and publishing quality content.

The great news is that although content marketing sounds expensive, it does not have to be. You can succeed at content marketing on nearly any budget. All you have to do is learn how to leverage the resources at your disposal. After all, when you don’t have a lot of money, you have to get creative! Read more

A few weeks back, Instagram celebrated its 5th birthday. Did you know that in just 5 short years, the platform has gone from a single post shared by Instagram’s co-founder, Kevin Systrom, to more than 80 million photos shared every single day from around the globe?

Indeed, from brands like Burberry and Levi’s to Ben and Jerry’s and PayPal, thousands of businesses are on Instagram, creating and sharing interesting and inspiring content. Instagram is, in effect, a proven way for businesses to raise awareness for their brands. The key to success is to know how to leverage its infrastructure to target your message more effectively and reach people based on what they care about. After all, Instagram is a growing community of 400 million and if you are not using the platform to be discovered by—and interact with—customers, you do so at your own peril. The things you can do on Instagram include:

1. Using the platform as your shop window to touch, inspire and move people
2. Using landscape photo and video to give your advertising a more cinematic feel
3. Video ads of up to 30 seconds for rich storytelling
4. Using Marquee to “own a moment” and drive mass awareness, perfect for things like a new product launch or a movie release

The challenge when it comes to Instagram is that as more and more people and brands jump onto the platform, the noise level for individual users is increasing. To really stand out from the crowd, you need to understand how to promote your content on Instagram for maximum reach and impact. Read more

Infographics represent a unique way of presenting a large amount of data in a small space (in one image) in a more different and more interesting way. Infographics were first used as an element of electronic presentations. Soon, the use of infographics has expanded and now this form of presentation has become accepted as an excellent way of publishing different information – mostly numerical data and statistics.

There are many reasons why people are using this type of content. Infographics are convenient for viewing, they look attractive and they are practical when it comes to presentation of facts and data that are not very interesting. On top of that, the human brain can memorize the data presented in this way much easier.

Infographics consist of three elements – visual solution, numerical data and short textual parts. Thanks to the advancement of technology, creating infographics has never been easier. In order to make them, you will need suitable tools. This is why we have created a list of 8 tools that can help you create the best infographics. Read more